At last, the servo of the future has arrived: It’s electric, and it’s located nearby

For three years we have been running a battery car that lives at the kerb.

Unlike most electric vehicle owners, we cannot plug in at home and must charge the beast at the public charging network.

This is not a major problem as we do not use the car every day. Like many inner-city dwellers, most of our trips are on two feet, two wheels, or in those venerable electric vehicles that run up and down the middle of the roads here in Melbourne. 

Like many inner urban vehicles, our car does not travel far. Even when you include summer holiday road trips, we only do 8,000 km a year, or an average of around 150 km a week. (That is around 60% of the Victorian average of 12,400 km a year or 240 km a week.) 

Mathematically, since the car has a nominal range of something over 300 km, it would only need a fill once a fortnight. 

In practice, we top it up once a week, keeping the charge in the middle band of 25% to  85%. Our minimum is high because we must be able to get from home to a charger.

We have also found the charge leaks away even when you switch off all the tech. We only fill to 85% because this car is reluctant to accept a charge to 100% and is slow to charge after 90%. Nor do the makers recommend you keep it fully charged for long periods. So, the middle band it is.

Looking back over our charge history I can see a typical fill used to take 40 minutes. More recently we have cut back to half an hour.

In those 30 minutes, on average we upload 16 kWh. This adds a bit more than 100 km or a week’s worth of round town driving. (The car says it needs 15 kWh to go 100 km. The charge data suggests it is using nearer to 16 kWh.)

The average cost of that fill has been over the last twelve months $9.60. This energy cost is cheaper than the average petrol car but not by much. With petrol at $1.70, and for a car with the fleet average economy of 6.9 litres/100 km, one hundred kilometres of fuel would cost $11.70.

The owner of a petrol miser that uses 4 litres/100 km would pay less for fuel, but we would beat them hands down on maintenance cost, driving pleasure and several other parameters.

Rising charge prices are approaching fuel cost parity. In 2023, we paid around $6.70 for 21 kWh. About April last year, 40¢ kWh turned into 58¢. This year 64¢ seems to be the going rate. One provider is exploring how many people are prepared to pay 75¢. At that price, we also would be paying $11.70 for one hundred kilometres.

Charge prices may continue to be high for some time as investors fund the expansion of the charging network. At some stage, when the public network has grown sufficiently, we can expect downward price competition. Already one provider is offering cheaper power overnight (although not at midday). 

Even at price parity the cost of energy from the public charging network is not a significant problem. What has been a difficulty over the last couple of years has been the relative scale, speed, and reliability of the public charging network.

Three years ago, in our area, public plugs were few and far away. Of those that were practical, many were super slow AC chargers. We experimented with these, but it is difficult when away from home to fit a multi-hour charge in your day.

Some AC providers added insult to impatience by expecting you to have a boot full of cables. The electric car equivalent of that tangle of A, B and C plugs with all the different other ends you have at home.

Things began to improve when more of the faster 50 kWh DC chargers began to appear in the urban area. In the early days, the emphasis was on installing these electric ‘bowsers’ on the highways. We needed them near home.

Fortunately, there were some fast chargers around town. We knew where each one was and how we could fit a fast fill into a return trip.

Returning from a longer trip to the east we would slip off the freeway and fill up in a huge parking lot between the Grog Barn and Chickenworks. Alternatively, we could wriggle into the charge bay at the library near the train station.

On the way back from the osteo in the northwest, we would duck underground to the power bank near the Aldi. Homebound from the west meant a zigzag into the charge bays near the electric bike shop. Coming home from the north there was a reliable charger near the police station. 

I suppose there were charge points to our south, but in this town northsiders rarely cross the river and southsiders only come north to eat or reach the MCG.

In this phase of growth, the embryonic public network was fast, and you didn’t need to bring your own hose, but the charge points were heavily used. Queueing was frequent. 

You also spent time queueing at the call centre as system reliability was low. The power, the payment, the start charging, and the disconnect signal could all be problematic. Over our mental map of the charge points we had an overlay of the likely level of use and the likelihood that the charger would be or would go offline.

We tended to avoid chargers offering free power. Like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, they were enticing but unlikely to be available when you arrived. It took some time and at least one corporate bankruptcy to shake all that out of the system.

Looking back to the start of the 1900s and the early days of liquid fuel, we can imagine drivers experiencing similar frustrations. One hundred years ago, you went down to the chemist, bike shop or hardware store and bought petrol in a tin can.

Likely there were days when the chemist was out of stock, or water had got into the can, or the hardware did not have change for a £5 note. Filling up would have been messy. Here are photos of early petrol retailers in Bendigo and Wodonga.

These problems and inefficiencies ended when Sylvanus Freelove Bowser adapted his pump for motor spirit and investors set up the pumps in purpose-built, off-street service stations.

Now, old Mr Bowser’s liquid fuel network is shrinking. There used to be dozens of servos in our area. Today one is a vet, a couple are car washes, another is a block of flats, another student housing. Many have been demolished, and the land is waiting patiently for its new role behind a temporary fence.

To survive this shrinkage, the modern servo has had to become a shop that also sells petrol. Just as it was one hundred years ago. One estimate is that the shop provides 30% of the servo’s revenue but 70% of the profit. Beyond petroleum as one group liked to say. 

This explains how the baby servo near us stays in business even though it can only refuel five cars at a time.

Small it might be, but with five refuelling points, it was bigger than any of our charge sites and much nearer to home.

Then, late last year, our local charging network entered a new phase when two reliable fast chargers popped up at a nearby supermarket. With these chargers nearby we could say goodbye to the horrible Chickenworks site and farewell to the library in another suburb. Now the police will have to come to us.

Things accelerated when a nearby shopping centre opened a charge site with eight charge points. With a bank of chargers in this direction we said goodbye to the underground Aldi and au revoir to the difficult car park near the bike shop.

A few days ago, in the basement car park of another local shopping centre, I saw the red-and-white people had turned their four-charger site into an eight-charger site (and open to all comers).

Today, we are spoilt for recharging choice and can put away our mental maps. 

The servo of the future has arrived.